kids and science
jstemwedel | January 12, 2007We have been dancing near record low temperatures in these parts. It's not quite as cold as the dark side of the moon, but it is cold enough that the water in the garden hoses is frozen in the morning and there's frost on the ground. (Also, cold enough that ice needs scraping off the windshield in the morning, which has led me to the discovery that, in the absence of a proper ice-scraper, a Safeway card does the job.) Still, in anticipation of our traditionally temperate late-winter weather here by the San Francisco Bay, we've been planning some garden-related fun for the Free-Ride…
jstemwedel | January 5, 2007This morning while I was ensconced in a shower, the younger Free-Ride offspring decided it would be a good idea to bound in and wake my better half.
Younger offspring: Good morning! Look at the sun.
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: (looking around groggily) What sun? It's still dark.
Younger offspring: I know. "Good morning! Look at the sun" is from a song.*
Younger offspring: Why is the sun always coming up and going down anyway?
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: (still groggy) Huh?
Younger offspring: Why is the sun always coming up and going down? Is it because the Earth is rotating?
Dr.…
jstemwedel | December 29, 2006The elder Free-Ride offspring has lately gotten into playing "poison", a nim-type game for two players. You start with a pile of twelve items that are the same and one item that is different (the poison). Each turn, players can remove either one or two items from the pile. The object of the game is to leave your opponent with no option but to take the poison.
In theory, it is possible to win the game every single time if your turn is second. (Thanks to MarkP for straightening me out on this one.) What the elder Free-Ride offspring has discovered in playing with the younger Free-Ride…
jstemwedel | December 29, 2006Younger offspring: (climbing on a bed) Let's launch a mission to space!
Dr. Free-Ride: OK.
Younger offspring: (using a blanket and a pillow to fashion a helmet) I'm going to put on a space-suit.
Dr. Free-Ride: Are you planning a space-walk on this mission?
Younger offspring: Yep. If astronauts need to pee in the middle of a space-walk, they can go right in their space-suits. But we're just playing, so I won't do that.
Dr. Free-Ride: Imagine my relief.
The Free-Ride offspring share some of their thoughts in the aftermath of their visit to the Air and Space Museum:
Elder offspring: I really…
jstemwedel | December 22, 2006The Free-Ride family was only delayed by about 8 hours in getting from California to Maryland. This was no thanks to the very unhelpful America West/US Airways ticket agent at San Francisco, who, after we waited in the line to get to the podium for nearly 4 hours, thought to put our luggage on the red-eye from Las Vegas but had to be pressed to put us on standby for the same flight rather than offering as our only option the connection-you're-about-to-miss-but-24-hour-later flight. Luckily, Las Vegas Customer Service Guy Patrick C. got us the relevant flight information that the evil-SFO-…
jstemwedel | December 19, 2006Brains enjoy getting information about the world around them. Although our sense organs do a pretty good job of keeping the data flowing to the brain, the occasional sense-organ-extending measuring device can add a whole new set of experiences for our brains to chew on.
We wrap up the brain-friendly giftables list with a selection of measuring devices. A (lab) notebook or sketch pad would make a fine accompaniment to any of these.
A microscope.
Hands-down, this was the most recommended giftable measuring device, and I don't think this is just a matter of ScienceBlogs skewing heavily…
jstemwedel | December 15, 2006Dr. Free-Ride's better half taught the younger Free-Ride offspring's kindergarten class about matter this week. It was a lesson that included a working definition, some hands-on explorations of the properties of different sorts of matter, and a little magic.
Working definition of matter (for kindergarteners): Something that has mass, takes up space, and that interacts with our senses. ("But what of electrons?" asked Dr. Free-Ride when hearing about the lesson. "Too soon!" replied Dr. Free-Ride's better half.)
Hands-on exploration:
Air is matter. The kids inflated balloons (some with…
jstemwedel | December 12, 2006The human mind seems to like creating things, and kids will use whatever tools are at their disposal to build. My uncle used to build death-defying systems of roadways with Hotwheels track and masking tape. A childhood friend of mine built elaborate structures out of Fig Newtons (largely because they were in abundance in her home and she couldn't stand to actually eat them). When you have a creative itch, almost anything can serve as the scratcher. Here are some toys for building that are probably less likely to attract ants than are Fig Newtons:
Gearation
Strictly speaking, you might…
jstemwedel | December 8, 2006The younger Free-Ride offspring cut this snowflake. But look again -- that's not just a snowflake, that's a snowflake with the face of a monkey! Is this what floats down from the sky to make a winter wonderland of the Planet of the Apes? (Would a sufficient number of monkeyflakes be useful in making frozen banana daiquiris?). "No," says younger offspring. "It's just a cool shape for a paper snowflake. Eee-eee-eee-eee!"
We are expecting rain this weekend, not snow. Nonetheless, it is December, so elder offspring and younger offspring decided to make some snowflakes.
We didn't do any…
jstemwedel | December 4, 2006There are two features of games that have always appealed to me. First, the good ones put you in a place where you are explicitly thinking out different ways the future could play out -- the possibilities that are more or less likely given what you know (and what you don't know). Second, many of them let you drag someone else (whether your opponent or your teammate) into thinking through these situations, too.
Any game where you have to make choices about what to do involves some sort of strategy, and formulating or refining strategies is a work-out for your brain. This means that games,…
jstemwedel | December 1, 2006Dr. Free-Ride: What science have you been learning in school lately?
Younger offspring: We've been learning what animals are nocturnal and what animals are diurnal.
Dr. Free-Ride: What other science have you learned this year?
Younger offspring: Oh, lots of different things.
Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, if there were a new kid in your class who hadn't had science before, how would you explain what science is? How would you be able to tell it apart from reading or math or writing your letters?
Younger offspring: Science is something you learn from parent helpers.
Dr. Free-Ride: Huh?
Younger offspring…
jstemwedel | November 30, 2006On the heels of my post wondering where the science is in elementary school, I'm interested in your sense of how things stand now and what, if anything, you think we should do about the situation. Draw on your experience as a former (or current) student, a parent, an educator (including educating future teachers), a working scientist, or whatever.
The possibilities that have been raised so far seem to be:
There is not now, and will not be any time soon, anything like a coherent and inspiring elementary school science curriculum because people who go into elementary education lack the…
jstemwedel | November 28, 2006My better half has been a frequent classroom volunteer leading science lessons in younger offspring's kindergarten class. This has made it fairly apparent to us that there's very little of what either of us would identify as science in these lessons.
Most recently, the science lesson centered on nocturnal animals. However, the activity the kids did was primarily a matter of drawing and coloring and cutting and affixing paper with glue. There was a wee bit of classification in here (glue the nocturnal animals on one page and the diurnal animals on the other), but significantly less…
jstemwedel | November 24, 2006The Free-Ride offspring spent Thanksgiving with the Grandparents Who Lurk But Seldom Comment, cutting into the opportunities for the Free-Ride parents to ask them about matters scientific. Nonetheless, the sprogs have been doing science-y things on their vacation from parents. Two highlights:
A visit to the Griffith Observatory, where they not only took in a planetarium show, but also weighed themselves on Mercury. (Both elder offspring and younger offspring weighed in at zero -- clearly Mercury is the right planet to visit after a heavy Thanksgiving meal!)
A visit to the California…
jstemwedel | November 22, 2006Some readers have called to my attention a pair of recent stories from the New York Times that you may find interesting.
First, Audrey noted another dispatch on the eternal struggle over how math ought to be taught:
For the second time in a generation, education officials are rethinking the teaching of math in American schools.
The changes are being driven by students' lagging performance on international tests and mathematicians' warnings that more than a decade of so-called reform math -- critics call it fuzzy math -- has crippled students with its de-emphasizing of basic drills and…
jstemwedel | November 22, 2006As promised, I bring you some gift recommendations for kids who are into math or science (or could be if presented with the right point of entry). The first installation: books.
Books are the best. They don't need batteries or assembly. They don't have lots of little parts that will end up strewn on the floor (or lost under the couch). You can read them alone or read them with others.
You can buy 'em new, but you can also find some amazing books at used bookstores, or garage sales, or library sales. And of course, if you have a library card you can partake of an astounding number of…
jstemwedel | November 17, 2006A conversation this morning:
Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, do you have any pictures you'd like me to scan in for today's sprog blog?
Younger offspring: No.
Dr. Free-Ride: You mean to tell me you haven't made any drawings at all this week?
Younger offspring: I've made drawings, but I don't want to scan any of them for your blog.
Dr. Free-Ride: You're not in negotiations with another blogger, are you?
Younger offspring: Not yet.
* * * * *
I've always been a candy sorter. Given a handful of M&Ms (or Skittles, or SweetTarts, or Spree), I cannot help but sort them by color before eating any of them…
jstemwedel | November 13, 2006Yeah, I'm grading. (Maybe you would be too if you weren't reading the blogs, hmm?) But I wanted to check in.
I pulled my back loading the car for the last soccer game of the season. What's the proper inference to draw from that (besides the obvious: that I'm getting old and all this grading is doing nothing for my muscle tone)?
How is it that if I make assignments at school they often are left undone, whereas if I make assignments on my blog, people do the work and turn it in? (Are we now awarding ScienceBlogs course credit?)
As much as I hate feeding capitalism (seriously, ask these guys…
jstemwedel | November 10, 2006This is not a "cute" story. It's an infuriating story about a school climate gone mad. And, although I suspect an organizational psychologist could give a nuanced analysis of the situation, that's not my area of expertise, so I'm just going to tell the story.
Elder offspring was sent to the Vice Principal's office yesterday. When the office called Dr. Free-Ride's better half about the incident, the crime they reported was "saying the B-word".
I should say right now, if you're in earshot of an elementary or secondary school as you're reading this post, please don't read it out loud! I…
jstemwedel | November 3, 2006This week, the elder Free-Ride offspring's science class was reviewing for a test. (In second grade? Did we used to review for science tests back in second grade? Maybe things have changed since then.) One of the issues in the material they were reviewing was sound, which prompted a discussion that ran beyond the bounds of what will be on the test.
Dr. Free-Ride: So, what do you know about sound?
Elder offspring: Well, sound can travel pretty well through air, and also through a fluid like water.
Younger offspring: That's why, in swim lessons, you can hear the teacher say, "One, two,…